“Power! It's coursing through my body!”
Li Xiuman felt the thrill of leveling up, the soul fire within his ribcage leaping joyfully.
At the same time, his right arm lit up once again.
An extra surge of power rushed from his right arm toward his other bones, bringing a wave of heat to the joint where his arm bone met his shoulder.
“What's going on?!”
Having just acted so dramatically, Li Xiuman dropped to one knee, clutching his shoulder.
A faint blue light shone from his shoulder, seemingly about to pierce through his clothes.
“Is the power in this arm still not fully integrated?!”
Li Xiuman held the arm, wanting to rip it off.
God knew what level the owner of this arm had been. Just a single arm contained such massive energy.
However, the arm was tightly attached to his body, glowing with a bright white light, making it completely impossible to pull off.
He could only grit his teeth through the pain, allowing the thermal current—which felt like it was going to melt his other bones—to run wild in his body.
But this time was clearly gentler than the last, without mercilessly tearing his body to shreds right off the bat.
Thanks to his vastly enhanced Constitution, Li Xiuman finally survived the energy's invasion.
[Ding! Strength +1]
Li Xiuman, who had been about to curse up a storm after enduring the pain, swallowed his words.
Damn it, what is this, the carrot and the stick?
Is this some kind of training play?
Li Xiuman stood up and made a gripping motion with his right arm.
Fortunately, this arm didn't show any signs of slipping out of his control.
When he was assailed by the bone arm's energy just now, Li Xiuman could feel that the power inside it had only been depleted by a small fraction.
The remaining energy would probably torture him countless more times like this before it was fully spent.
And he only felt the pain because his Constitution was too low.
With his previous Constitution, if he hadn't allocated those stat points, he might have been blown to pieces on the spot.
Still, if this happened every time he leveled up, his weakest stat, Strength, at least wouldn't be left too far behind by his Spirit.
As for the pain...
He would just treat it as a trial of hardship.
Drawing his dagger, he harvested the magic stones from the lizardmen's bodies and stuffed them into his waist pouch. Letting their corpses sink into the earth, he continued his raid toward the lower floors of the dungeon.
Although he wanted to subjugate that Unique Variant lizardman king, it was better to play it safe for now.
He would gather the Octagonal Fire Crystals first, and see if there was an opportunity on his way back.
Assuming, of course, that he could actually beat it.
Entering the sixteenth floor, monsters were becoming increasingly scarce, and he could only hunt a few low-tier magical beasts.
Not expecting to level up again, Li Xiuman focused on descending.
The seventeenth floor, eighteenth floor, nineteenth floor.
The time spent on the raid grew longer and longer. Even with a map, it still took quite a bit of time for a first-timer like Li Xiuman.
Furthermore, the monsters were also becoming more powerful.
A week had passed since he entered the dungeon. Hurrying along the entire way, Li Xiuman finally reached the twentieth floor.
After entering the twenty-first floor from here, he would quickly gather the target at the marked location on the map, retreat to the twentieth floor, and head back.
Li Xiuman stared at the passage leading to the twenty-first floor, mentally preparing himself.
“I haven't run into any other adventurers in a long time.”
At this depth, other adventurers were virtually nonexistent.
Even if they did cross paths, they would only guard against each other.
Then there was the Hyena Adventurer Party; he had to look out for them as well.
After all, they were an eight-man party, and he didn't know if they had set up an ambush for him on the twenty-first floor.
No, they probably wouldn't bother ambushing him. Instead, they would be waiting for him out in the open.
It wasn't that the Hyena Party was honorable, but rather their contempt for him made them feel that ambushing him was beneath them.
Li Xiuman always evaluated his enemies based on the absolute lowest standards of human morality.
Clenching his magic staff, Li Xiuman walked into the passage and headed toward the twenty-first floor.
As he went deeper, the air grew hotter and hotter, thick with a dry, suffocating heat and faint, floating embers.
The light began to shift toward a deeper orange-red.
Until he finally crossed the scorching passage and arrived on the twenty-first floor.
A dazzling crimson glow poured in from the exit of the passage.
It was like stepping into hell; rivers of molten lava spread across the landscape.
Pitch-black volcanic rock looked as if it had been thoroughly charred.
With the bubbling of the lava, yellow-black smoke billowed continuously from deep underground.
From the twenty-first floor of the dungeon to the thirtieth floor lay a world of molten rock.
Even though he had read descriptions and seen illustrations of this section of the dungeon in guides, seeing it in person for the first time still deeply shook Li Xiuman.
He surveyed his surroundings, feeling the thrill of being an adventurer.
The sense of exploration—of reaching places humans could never set foot in, seeing impossible sights, and discovering the unknown—intoxicated him.
“Let's start exploring.”
“Though, it looks like Quagmire won't work in this place. Even Water Magic will be extremely difficult to cast.”
Li Xiuman tapped the pitch-black ground with his staff with a sigh of regret.
Next, he took out his map and began plotting a route to the nearest harvesting spot for the Octagonal Fire Crystals.
Having mapped out his route, Li Xiuman gripped his magic staff, eager to begin exploring this molten hell.
As a fleshless skeleton, he could wander through this volcanic inferno with far greater ease and leisure than any human.
“Whoosh!”
A glob of molten lava suddenly shot toward Li Xiuman from the nearby river of magma.
Li Xiuman pushed off the ground, nimbly dodging the lava and staring into the flowing magma.
“Just like the descriptions said. They really do hide at the bottom of the lava to ambush people.”
Li Xiuman watched the river of lava, unsurprised.
Then, he raised his staff as if waiting for something.
Sure enough, moments later, a bizarre figure emerged from the lava.
It resembled a massive crocodile, except it had six legs with red webbing between its claws.
Molten lava flowed between the grooves of its scales, making it look horrific and fearsome.
[Race] Molten Six-Legged Crocodile
[Level] Lv.19
[Class] Monster Warrior
[Description] A crocodile that lives in lava. It has excellent Fire Resistance and can manipulate lava and fire, making it a dangerous hunter lurking in molten depths.
Wasting no time on pleasantries with Li Xiuman, it opened its jaws and lunged. Lava dripped from its mouth like the drool of a rabid dog about to bite.
Li Xiuman retreated to gain some distance, raising his staff.
“Tier 1 Magic, Earth Spike!”
Sharp stone spikes erupted from the ground, thrusting toward the fire crocodile.
Using all six of its legs, the crocodile moved like a fiery-red blur, dodging the spikes before leaping into the air to snap at him.
“Just what I wanted!”
Clenching his staff, Li Xiuman planted his feet, twisted his hips, and swung the staff with the full momentum of his shoulders and arm.
[Great Strength Lv.2] activated on its own.
With a sharp cracking sound, the staff slammed heavily into the crocodile's head.
In an instant, the crocodile was sent flying. It crashed violently against the stone wall before bouncing onto the ground, its flesh bursting open to reveal cracked bones.
“Well, that's pretty tough.”
Li Xiuman remarked in awe.
Realizing it had bitten off more than it could chew, the crocodile scrambled unsteadily back toward the lava, trying to make its escape.
Li Xiuman wasn't about to give it the chance. He wrapped Wind Magic around his staff to form a propelling vortex of wind, and hurled it with the power of [Great Strength Lv.2].
Then, with a loud thud, the staff pinned the crocodile right to the edge of the lava.
“Roar!”
As the crocodile thrashed wildly, boiling blood poured continuously from the pinned wound.
Li Xiuman, unfazed, calmly raised his hand and aimed at the crocodile from a distance.
“Tier 1 Magic, Wind Spiral Spike.”
A yellow and a blue magic circle opened in his palm, condensing a conical stone spike and a spinning vortex of wind.
As the rotation reached its critical point, the stone spike shot out, instantly blasting away the crocodile's upper jaw and skull.
[Ding! Slain Molten Six-Legged Crocodile. Experience +550]
Happily, Li Xiuman stepped forward to retrieve the staff pinned to the crocodile and carved out its magic stone.
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